I work in small but hugely successful hedge fund company and make excellent money. Last year the company did REALLY well, and after a few months of the CEOs crunching numbers, they finally announced that we’d receive a bonus to cover last year’s performance, and this year’s, too. Based on my performance, mine was an incredible thirty thousand dollars. The top executives earned easily twice that.
The way the company is set up, is that our bonuses are deposited directly into our checking accounts like our paychecks, and are appropriately taxed. Therefore my thirty thousand dollars ended up being a still-amazing twenty-four and change, thanks to tax breaks for marriage and children (we have two: a five year old boy and a three year old girl). My wife is a stay at home mother. Prior to our marriage seven years ago she was maitre d' at a fancy restaurant.
However, our bosses have a program set up where, if you elect to do so within a two week window, you can write the company a check for your after-tax bonus, they will cash it, and give back your full, pre-tax bonus and invest it for you in your 401K, a Roth IRA, or other tax sheltered annuity fund.
I planned to do exactly that, and just put it in my retirement account. Last year I did the same thing, but the year before that my wife and I took a month-long trip to Europe while my mother watched our kids. I planned to take us on another vacation trip with next year’s bonus, this time with our old-enough kids.
We were told about our bonus last Monday, and that same day my boss asked me and three other fund managers to accompany him to a two night conference in New York (I live in Los Angeles), leaving the next afternoon. With the hustle and bustle of packing and preparing, I decided not to tell my wife about the bonus. It wasn’t yet in our account anyway, and I thought it would make for pleasant conversation after I got back.
I own a 1981 Honda Prelude, fully restored so that it looks close to mint. However my daily driver is a newer car. I also bought a Range Rover SUV for my wife to use two years ago. I’ve had the Prelude since I was a teenager—it was all banged up then--and constantly tinker with it in my off-hours; fixing up the sound system, adding things, you know. I’ve always told my wife casually that one day I intended to sell it and turn a tidy profit (I’ve had it appraised, and with the restorations it’s worth about twenty grand). I’ve always kept the number of the appraiser stuck to our refrigerator on a magnet; he said he’d buy my car in a heartbeat. Honestly though, I hoped to keep it long enough to eventually give it to my son.
Anyway, too shorten an already rambling story (sorry), I guess my wife looked up our account balance online while I was on my business trip, and saw that we had well over twenty grand extra, and sold my old Prelude to the appraiser for nineteen thousand dollars. She then took that money, plus the twenty-four grand and immediately bought a 2017 BMW i3 outright for cash.
When I came back from my trip early Thursday, she surprised me with what she had done. She told me the car was for me. I was tired from jetlag and at the time thanked her.
But later the next day at the office, I got really annoyed. I saw that she posted about it on Facebook, and everyone, including our mutual friends, was praising her for being so sweet and thinking of me. She also explained online that she had gotten rid of my old Prelude. The fact that my wife bought an electric car also got loads of praise, with friends saying that she was right to think about the environment. My own friends (I’m not much of a social media person and rarely post updates) made incredulous comments on my wife’s timeline stating that they thought that I loved my old car and were surprised that I sold it.
I got a few texts from friends asking me about it but I just played it off like it was my decision because I didn’t want to seem like I was contradicting my wife.
For the past week, my wife’s been going on about how she’s glad the Prelude is gone and how great it is that we have an environmentally friendly vehicle.
I’m annoyed because I already had a perfectly good car to use for work, and continue to drive it. And even though the new BMW is sitting right there and can fit our kid’s safety seat, my wife continues to use her huge Range Rover to go places.
It’s kind of too late to return the BMW. I hinted to one of my wife’s friends who was over at the house during the weekend that I missed my old car. My wife wasn’t in the room at the time. My wife’s friend said that it was more mature to have the BMW and that my wife was being really considerate to think of me in giving me that car, and that I should be grateful and drive it.
Am I right to be annoyed? I have been feeling a low level of anger at my wife for selling a car I really liked behind my back, a car which I’ve owned for over twenty years. I’m also upset that she spent my bonus behind my back without any input from me. And yet I don’t want to start a fight with her because supposedly the car is for me and she did it for me. She’s reveling right now in all the praise she’s getting for buying an environmentally friendly car and her girlfriends are all patting her on the back for getting rid of my “old junk” car, as they call it.
Don’t really know what to do right now. I guess I’ll get over it with time.
She kind of does this on other occasions where it's appropriate to get a gift for me, like my birthday or Father's Day. She'll surprise me with an extravagant gift... that she bought using the money in our joint account. She doesn't really buy stuff for me with money from her personal account.
tl;dr
My wife spent all of my job bonus money behind my back in order to buy an electric car she says is for me. She also sold my vintage car behind my back to help pay for it, and now I’m feeling really annoyed.
Submitted July 21, 2016 at 03:26AM by SuperMarioOnlyChild http://ift.tt/2avodsL relationships
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